We Have a Theory About the End of ‘Captain Marvel’

Back before Avengers: Infinity War released last year, we posted a slew of theories about what we thought would happen in the movie, many of which turned out to be correct. A lot of factors went into how we came up with those theories: we analyzed trailers, considered the way various storylines have played out in the comics, studied the overarching structure of the MCU, and filtered those ideas through what we know of basic storytelling structure.

As you’d likely expect, this means we also have a lot of theories about the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. While we’ll be outlining most of those in a post shortly before the film comes out, there’s one that we wanted to get on the record ahead of the release of Captain Marvel, which hits theaters later this week.

Although we all love the Captain Marvel comics and have been eagerly anticipating the movie ever since it was first announced, we’re fully expecting the Marvel Cinematic Universe to put its own spin on the character of Carol Danvers. It’s true that every movie in the MCU takes its inspiration from the comics, but they’ve consistently made a point not to stick too closely to the original source material, in order to keep their storylines surprising to everyone in the audience, whether or not they’re familiar with the comics.

This means that although we’re familiar with Captain Marvel’s origins and storylines from the comics, we’re not holding our collective breath that the movie will stick close to any of that. As has been the case with all of its other leading characters, we expect that the MCU version of Carol will be reimagined while still staying true to the core of her character, weaving threads from her comics storylines together with original material to form something refreshingly new, yet vaguely familiar.

As far as how this impacts our Captain Marvel theories… well, it means that we don’t really have any. We’re ready to let it surprise and impress us on its own terms, and are making an effort to go in free of any preconceived notions or predictions… save one. Which really isn’t a Captain Marvel theory so much as an Endgame theory that we’re pretty sure will take place at the end of Captain Marvel.

We’d like to emphasize now that we have absolutely zero inside knowledge of Captain Marvel, Endgame, or any other Marvel movie. We haven’t been hunting down spoilers or talking to people who have seen advance screenings, and are posting this before the review embargo is lifted. Our theories come entirely from our own brains. That said, we do have a pretty good track record for being right about a respectable percentage of our theories, which means that while we may be completely wrong, there’s also a decent chance that the theory in this post may turn out to be a pretty big spoiler for both Captain Marvel and Endgame (and it 100% contains spoilers for the end of Infinity War and the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp, but we’re assuming that if you’re reading this post, you’ve already seen those. If you haven’t… what are you doing here? Go catch up).

Okay, so if you’re still reading, that means you’ve either already seen Captain Marvel and are coming back to see if we were right, or you haven’t seen it but don’t care about potential spoilers. Good? Good.

So as we all know by now, at the end of Infinity War, Thanos completes the Infinity Gauntlet, snaps his fingers, and wipes out half of all life in the universe, including Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier), Sam Wilson (Falcon), T’Challa (Black Panther), Peter Parker (Spider-Man), Stephen Strange (Dr. Strange), Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch), and every Guardian of the Galaxy except for Rocket Raccoon. In a mid-credits scene, we also see Maria Hill and Nick Fury dusted, but not before Fury manages to dash to the back of his car and activate a device displaying Captain Marvel’s symbol. Put a pin in that; we’ll come back to it.

Then, during the end credits of Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scott Lang has just entered the Quantum Realm on a mission that’s supposed to take just a few minutes, when we see that Hope Van Dyne, Hank Pym, and Janet Van Dyne have all disappeared as well, stranding Scott in the Quantum Realm. Just before the reveal that the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp is taking place at the same time as the end of Infinity War, Janet warns Scott not to get “sucked into a time vortex.”

Both scenes are part of the MCU’s long-standing tradition of revealing important information during its end credits sequences. We believe that not only will (one of) the end credits scene(s) of Captain Marvel be important, but that it will directly tie into both of these previous end credits scenes.

Our prediction is that during the end credits of Captain Marvel, Scott Lang will show up in the ‘90s.

We don’t think his appearance is actually going to be explained until Endgame (similar to the Captain America: Civil War scene that appears during the end credits of Ant-Man, or the Thor: Ragnarok scene that’s included during the end credits for Doctor Strange, we expect that the scene at the end of Captain Marvel is going to turn out to be a scene from Avengers: Endgame), and we’ll allow for a slight chance that it will be a different Avenger appearing in the ‘90s instead of Scott, but the bottom line is, we predict that the end credits scene of Captain Marvel will be used to tease the fact that the plot of Endgame will include time travel.

We’re not entirely sure who Scott will encounter during this scene (our money is on Nick Fury) or how much he’ll actually say (our guess is not much beyond, “Hi, I’m Scott!” and possibly “I’m here from the future!” because that seems like a thing Scott would say); all the Captain Marvel scene has to do is pique interest, not actually explain anything, so we’re betting they’ll keep it short and sweet.

Then, during Endgame, we expect to learn how exactly the Avengers used the Quantum Realm to time travel (and how Scott escaped from it in the first place), what their mission is in sending someone to the ‘90s, and what all of that has to do with the pager-like device that Nick Fury activated right before he turned to dust.

We have theories for all of this, along with a ton of other ideas about what to expect from Avengers: Endgame. But you’ll have to wait until April to read them.

For now, just know that if Scott Lang (or another Avenger) turns up during the end credits of Captain Marvel… we called it.